If you don’t look, it doesn’t exist. If you don’t think about it, it didn’t happen.

A strategy employed by the pot-smoking teenager Peter Graham (Alex Wolff) whose family is threatened by a vengeful spirit (or is it the actions of a deranged mind?) after the death of his grandmother Ellen.

A secretive and private woman who was estranged from her daughter Annie (Toni Collette) and son-in-law Steve (Gabriel Byrne), but after breaching a “no contract rule” with her grandchildren developed a close bond with her granddaughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro).

A young girl of whom it could be said has a face only a grandmother could love: a tomboyish loner with unconventional looks who in addition to clipping the heads off dead birds and drawing “retards” has developed a nervous tic in the form of tongue clicking.

Click, from the opening shot all is not what it seems. Click, a photo of a tree house zooms out to reveal an actual tree house framed within a window pane. Click, same shot pans indoors to reveal a giant dolls house which upon closer inspection is an actual house with actual people dressing for an actual funeral of said dead grandmother.

A week later, things start to bump in the night – and day. The grave is desecrated, a reflection belies the truth, apparitions appear and disappear in the blink of a bloodshot eye, a bird flies into a window, a car flies off the road and a grief-stricken parent flies off the handle after discovering a swarm of flies feeding on an ever-increasing heap of decapitated bodies.

Written and directed by Ari Aster, in his first feature after a number of shorts including The Strange Thing About The Johnsons and the colourfully-entitled Tino’s Dick Farts, Hereditary is a gripping slow-burner by an excellent cast which in the final third races to a thrilling finale – described by one aged audience member afterwards as “way too OTT for me”.

For this ageing audience member, it wasn’t. Though I thought it lacked a big bang to earn what many critics have garlanded it with – a fifth star.

Are the fiendish actions the result of a deranged mind? Mental ill-health certainly runs in the family. Are they executed by a vengeful spirit in search of a possession? Seances and spiritual mediums attempt to summon the dead. Is foul play at play? Skeletons are rattling in several closets, not to mention attics.  Or is it a combination of all of the above or none?

Either way, as Annie’s mum wrote in a family photo album: “Our sacrifice will pale next to the rewards.” Go see!

Director: Ari Aster
Writer: Ari Aster
Stars: Toni Collette, Milly Shapiro, Gabriel Byrne
Peter Callaghan
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